Jun OJIMA wrote:Every year in Japan, a number of cooks, waiters and waitresses are poisoned in the kitchen or semi-enclosed spaces by CO generated by burning charcoal.
room size doesn't really factor into that formula. that ventilation rate is for a fume hood placed right by the stove.Baisao wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 10:05 amThank you, Pedant. I appreciate a more scientific approach to this. Based on that last formula, it looks like a 4x4x3 meter room would be safe from poisoning for at least an hour. (Is this correct?) That's a pretty small room and I wouldn't begin to consider using a brazier in a room so small without a lot of ventilation. If this is correct, it would help explain how these were frequently used in Japanese homes.
table 2 in that paper is really nice though and gives their experimental data for CO generation rate for 5 different binchotan charcoals.
the highest recorded test gave 216 mL/min/kW CO. going back to my stated requirement (bring a liter of water from room temp to boiling in 15 minutes), that's 0.371 kW. so such a stove would generate 80.1 mL CO / min.
to get CO concentration (volumetric ppm), you do:
CO concentration in ppm = 80.1 mL/min * (stove runtime in min) / (volume of room in mL) * 10-6
so running such a stove for 15 minutes in a 4m*4m*3m room, you get 25 ppm CO.
that's for a completely sealed room with no ventilation, and it assumes that the air in the room is homogenous (running a fan or something).
from the source in my above post, it says that 25ppm is "Max TWA Exposure for 8 hour work-day (ACGIH)" and has "Possible health effects with long-term exposure."
that's much better than my worst-case scenario calculation which assumed that all of the carbon in the charcoal was converted to CO.
i'd still run a fan (not pointing right at the stove lol), open up the doors and windows, and plug in a CO alarm nearby.
fire extinguisher couldn't hurt either.